nursery plans.

It’s been quite an eventful first half of the new decade. 2020 started off with a bang. And to sum up 5 months very quickly, here’s the cliff notes version. I began teaching a design class at my alma mater. I helped coach a learn-to-skate class on the weekends. All the while keeping up with my day job and ever so slowly chipping away at house projects. Well, that first month of new endeavors came to a screeching halt when on Saturday, February 8 at around 10:30 am; I had a freak fall on the ice, and broke my lower right leg in 4 places. My foot was facing a different direction from my knee, and my tibia had broken skin and come out a bit just above my skate boot.

First real broken bone(s), first ride in an ambulance, first OR experience- oh my! It’s been a loooong period of recovery. To make matters a bit more interesting, and why that February 8th date is so important, we actually found out we were pregnant Friday, February 7- the day before! You can see our little announcement post here. So going into the surgery with that new knowledge made things even scarier.

Fast forward two months and just as I began to start working again from home, the nation went into a state of emergency. We are currently witnessing a global pandemic due to a coronavirus. Physical distancing, face masks, and self-quarantining are common practice. It is a very interesting time to be pregnant and healing!

Anyway, due to to the fact we cannot go into many physical stores at the moment, we created a mood board to kick start our design plans. We decided not to add insulation to this one room as it sits in between our master, and the garage, and right above the furnace. Thus it, and the bathroom, are likely the most insulated/warm spots in the house. So our changes are minimal- new trim, new paint, lots of cleaning. Obviously, we refinished the hardwood before we moved in 3.5 years ago, so that’s checked off as well! On to the cosmetics!

MOOD BOARD

We’re envisioning a warm sunny vibe. Maybe some hints at places we’ve traveled- Greece, Spain, California, Mexico, perhaps? Once we find out gender I’m sure little tokens will be added here and there, but for the most part we’re trying to stay reasonably neutral. Octobers are such a beautiful month and in Michigan, when we’re lucky, summers can linger well into the fall. Mustard and rust colors remind us of those late summer days.

SOURCE  ||  A B C D E F G H I

progress post: a bedroom update.

We’ve been navigating through a variety of life happenings lately and our house, per usual, takes the back seat. So I thought I’d update on another room, that like our bath, that has been finished up until the fun decor part!

Aside from the second upstairs bedroom which is currently a giant storage space, our newly appointed master bedroom had the least drastic of changes. We did have to remove two exterior facing walls in order to add insulation to our insulation-less house. New drywall, mudding, priming, painting, new window frames, and new trim. While extremelyyyyy tedious- mostly just small cosmetic changes in the grand scheme of things. We decided to take on this project shortly after we got married. For the most part, the mess could be quarantined in this situation. And we set up camp in the living room for a couple months.

While not completely without drama- our bedroom is the reason why we hired out a painter for the front half of our main level. We tried our hand at a paint sprayer and felt like we were wasting A LOT of paint… so either the tool was broken (which we did call support and they were very helpful, but couldn’t 100% solve our dilemma, so it’s possible!) or user error. I’m going to assume the later. But don’t you worry, we definitely had a nice little photoshoot in our initial blissfully ignorant pre-painting state.

The master bedroom closet was a slightly bigger project, as we increased the square footage by four. Not quite a standard size walk-in, but much larger than it was in 1960. We opened it to an adjacent closet from the third upstairs bedroom, which we have since removed. We then bumped the back wall of the closet out about an extra 18 inches. We are using Ikea’s Algot system for organization and will have a post about that too.

So all the heavy duty stuff has been done! And we are living in a world of white. The bedroom and closet function, but they are begging for color, organization, and new furniture! I cannot wait for those to be the focus someday. It’s hard for us to keep the mess in one designated area. As we work on the kitchen, everything accumulates in other rooms… dust, papers, food, stuff. I hate it. So we don’t want to add more, albeit new, stuff. But we’re also still in love with watching our house evolve. And eventually we’ll have much more storage that we are severely lacking now.

By the way, you can find our initial ideas for the bedroom here and the closet plan here.

So about that photoshoot…

One of us may have been a bit more into it than the other…

date night selfie.

james from rivertown woodcraft helping us with our new window frames.

mike the drywaller, our vip.

mike's right hand kitten.

lavender walls and (once) teal trim. #glam

our short lived careers as professional paint sprayers.

mitten house swag.

bye lavender walls!

contemplating fixtures.

this is so aesthetically appealing to me.

♥

space claimed.

progress post: a bathroom update.

Update!

I have so many posts to finish about various areas of the house… but ya know, editing vacation photos just wins me over every time.

Remember the plans for our little baby bath? Well, we're sticking pretty close to it so far. We've got all white mostly everything. A beautiful custom vanity by our friend, James, at Rivertown Woodcraft. And the signature Ikea mirror. I purchased that like... pre-demo. Everyone puts this mirror in their bathroom, do they not?

We did not however, pull off the hex tile floor. Just wasn't going to work out. We contemplated the flooring forever, per usual. But I think sticking with a simple grey stacked mosaic ended up working out well. We'll bring in unique elements elsewhere- in non permanent ways. It also took us forever and a day to decide on a vanity faucet (because the round mirror hung down and out from the wall so much), and light fixtures (I wanted your entire face lit, not just from above.) The struggle with balancing modern and functional with midcentury and appropriate adds to our decision making delays too.

Pro tip: Make sure you measure ALL pieces and parts. I was convinced the light fixtures were not evenly spaced around the mirror and in relation to the vanity. But we kept measuring and realigning, and almost put new holes in the wall! The measurements were telling us everything was evenly spaced and aligned properly, yet the whole placement felt off. Last thing we thought to measure- the round mirror. It wasn’t perfectly round and the nail holes on the frame were not centered!! So we eyeballed that and it looks much better now. #ThanksIkea

And now some things we tried, things we learned, and things we redid.

Things we tried

We initially tried to cut individual tiles to create a custom floor pattern. I love our creativity and blind ambition. However, it would have taken much much longer to finish and the saw blade kept chipping the tile edges. We probably didn’t even have the right tile to be cutting like that anyway. But look how fun our idea was!

Things we learned

Another failed attempt was mudding and taping our drywall. My exact thought was, “Hey I went to art school, I know how to sand things! Dustin works on vehicles. This is just like bondo, I’m sure. We got this!” Absofrickinlutely not. One attempt at a corner and I was done; again fearing we were ruining the house. So we called in the pros! For the first time we hired out work and I’m so glad we did! MikeTheMudder, our OG VIP came in to save the day and has since returned to do our bedroom, closet, and living/dining/and kitchen area.

This was big because we learned when it’s necessary to call in people who already know what they are doing! DIY is F-I-N-E until it’s not. Mike saved us time, and in-turn money, because we won’t have to redo his work. No ripply bubbles in our walls! He also uses like five different compounds! There are specific reasons for each separate layer. Some are sticky and strong, intended to hold. Others are thin and easily sanded. We had purchased one… newbs.

us.

pro.

Things we redid

Like the DIY tile and drywall mud, we’re not going to get everything right the first time. That was the case of our trim. Our first plan was to match the trim in the rest of the house. The rounded edge style common to all our grandparent’s homes. Our friend Drew, who has helped all throughout our renovation process, worked with Dustin to install the trim in the bathroom. The new toilet was set into place. I even got the new trim painted. After a couple days Dustin decided he didn’t like it. He wanted something thinner. We’ll end up replacing the trim throughout the rest of the house, so it reallllly wasn’t necessary to match anything at that time.

I’m stating right here, right now, if you’re ever contemplating changing something out in your house and get cold feet- call me in. I’ll rip off the bandaid for you. My mom can attest. I will tear down that strip of wallpaper, carefully remove the newly installed trim, roll on that scary bright paint color. I’ll do that initial scary step for you. You’re very welcome.

So I stepped up on the latter and said, “Yeah? You don’t like this anymore?” And popped off the first piece. Second time around we had a paint sprayer and painted the trim ahead of time. Our caulking skills had improved by then too. :) So it wasn’t the worst project to have to redo.

Round two!

not as fun once the toilet is in place...

Ongoing bathroom debates and projects:

Frost the windows. We have yet to come up with a privacy screen. We removed the lace contact paper and have since taped towels over the windows. So we obviously need a better solution, it just has not been the first priority. As a reminder, this window looks out into our garage, which through garage windows looks into our neighbor’s windows and into their house. Hiiiiiii.

Update the shower hardware. Still working with those plastic gems, guys. Need to find a stainless steel option to match the rest of our fixtures. We just haven’t yet because pickiness… are you surprised?

Decorate!!! Oh my gosh, I CANNOT WAITTTTT. We’ve avoided stores and antique malls for awhile. I didn’t want to decorate the finished rooms because of drywall dust and general construction woes. But we’re getting there!

Organize the vanity. My OCD tendencies can’t wait to make a trip to the Container Store for this specific reason. Kind of waiting to do this and the linen closet right outside the bathroom at the same time.

Refresh caulk and grout. Eh. ya know, eventually.

but i brought demo clothes.

Monday, August 22, 2016.

I had a day full of photoshoots at work, very busy. But I was SUPER excited because I had just closed on our house that following Wednesday. You can read the story here. Dustin came home after a couple weeks away at training. We had just helped my parents move into their new home over the weekend. (My parents, my sister & brother-in-law, and Dustin & I all closed on houses within two weeks of each other...!)

Bye old home! ♥

But FINALLY Dustin and I were going to put a hole in a wall of our newly purchased fixer upper. Woo!

Dustin called me at work and said he wanted to take "sold" sign photos in front of the house before the dumpster arrived on Tuesday. He made plans with some of our friends to stop by and snap the occasion.

I knew he wanted to take photos in front of the house, he had mentioned he liked when people did that. So that was no surprise to me. Although after a busy Monday, it was not how I thought the evening was going to go... LITTLE DID I KNOW. But it all made sense since he had ordered the dumpster for the next day. So it was basically now or never to get these photos taken.

We changed our clothes after work real quick and met some friends at our new house. We showed them around and started taking pictures. Antsy to get my demo on, after a handful of poses, I said "K! Think that's good?! Are we done?" Dustin said he had one more he wanted to take.

And on that sunny Monday evening, in front of our paparazzi friends, on the lawn of our first house, surrounded by the droning buzz of neighbor's lawnmowers, Dustin got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.

Photos will show (not one below), I probably did not have the best immediate facial reaction. Like lots of people, I was totally caught off guard- not expecting it! That moment seemed to stop time and I just couldn't grasp what was going on. And then it's like when the camera zooms in to catch up to real time and you start to hear sounds again. And after my inital, "Are you serious?!" I said, "Yes!"

bought a house, bellies out

So once all the photos and pleasantries and "You guys knew?!" and "Aww, you talked to my dad?" (tears) were done, I realized we probably weren't going to start demo tonight. "But I brought demo clothes! And this was the plan all along?!" Dustin nodded and laughed; me still in disbelief at all that had just occurred.

Turns out he had been hanging onto that ring for the perfect moment, just like the card I had been waiting to give him.

That night, we went out for dinner, talked to both of our parents, and had a quiet celebration, just for us, back at our apartment.

And who knew we'd begin demo on our first house, engaged?! Well Dustin... obviously. ☺

keys, please.

Wednesday, August 17, 2016.

We've officially owned our home for TWO YEARS. It's still in a state of disarray but it has also come so far. We love it.

Just a casual stroll down memory lane.

See all the before photos here.

first time homeowner!

my dad's face.

My parents came down to sit with me during the closing and visit our fixer upper!

I surprised Dustin with the bar in the basement. He was actually away being army man when I closed. So it was fun to walk him through the house- OUR house when he got home a couple days later.

Anyway, the bar came with the house, but I told him the sellers had taken it. So he was happy to see it still standing- for his future basement parties. Sitting on the bar was a card that I had purchased the past November at an artist market. I was SO excited I found it and held onto it for so long. It had little keys printed on the cover. I knew someday we'd have a house, and I'd be prepared with the perfect card! Propped up behind the card was a "SOLD" sign. Dustin was bummed the realtors never posted a sold sign out front- like the shows on TV. But this little handmade one came into play five days later...